The main purpose of this essay is to show how discrimination takes place in some literary works. Shakespeare and Chaucer were two of the most important literary authors in the past. Works like; “The Tempest”, “The Merchant of Venice” (Shakespeare) or “The Wife of Bath” and “Truth” (Chaucer) are excellent inventions from which we can extract very good examples of old discrimination. At the end of this paper there will be some important question to make, in order to establish a relationship between literature, discrimination and education. For example; Do we human beings still suffer or commit discrimination? Is discrimination the same that was in the past? Is there a method to avoid discrimination? Do we find this problem in the educational field? These questions are essential to reach the main aim or purpose of this essay.
In order to understand the discriminatory practices in these literary works, it is necessary to present a definition of the word discrimination. From my point of view, discrimination is neither something new nor old. As the Anti-Discrimination act (1991) says, “In general terms, discrimination is any practice that makes distinctions between individuals or groups that disadvantage some and advantage others.” It could be also understood as an act against a person of a certain group determined by beliefs (religion), racial characteristics (color of skin), gender, education, social status, etc. This act goes beyond the individual merit because it is full of prejudices. In our world we have different types of discrimination related to; age, disability, national origin, race based, religion, etc.
Having presented a brief definition of what is discrimination, the next step would be to introduce the first of the two authors that we are going to see in this paper. William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-on-Avon, England on 1564 (as Galileo). His father was a trader in agricultural goods and a farmer. Shakespeare family was in the middle of the social system. William Shakespeare studied at the Stratford Grammar School. During his early twenties, he wrote lots of plays, about thirty six. He wrote histories of love, romance and romantic tragicomedies and poems. Shakespeare was not a typical poet and he was successful economically. He finally died in Stratford on April 23 when he was fifty two years old. It is good to say that Shakespeare does not have any descendants, because all his children died pretty young.
After all these antecedents, we can start working of Shakespeare works. This time, we are going to start talking about “The Tempest”. In “The Tempest”, Shakespeare presented two main characters that develop the whole story, Caliban and Prospero. Caliban was the unknown element or character in front of Prospero. Caliban’s appearance was weird and his life style was totally different comparing to Prospero. For example, Caliban did not name thing as Prospero did. This situation could be understood as the non-educated action that Caliban had, what made him inferior in front of Prospero’s eyes. It is obvious that we have discrimination in this relationship between Caliban and Prospero, because as Prospero was more educated than Caliban, he committed discriminatory practices punishing Caliban or showing him that he was inferior. In this situation we can say that there is more than one type of discrimination. If we talk about appearance we can be talking about racial discrimination. We can also say that there is some social discrimination, because as Caliban is not as educated as Prospero, he is condemned to obey and follow Prospero’s rules. If we stop to think about this, maybe we will found that in today’s world the same happen between Latin American populations and the United States, because they think they are more educated than us and they commit so many times discrimination against us.
In addition to the previous analysis, Shakespeare also is the author of “The Merchant of Venice”, in which we can find evident and horrible acts of discrimination. In “The Merchant of Venice”, there are a lot of discriminatory practices. For example, if we stop and analyze what happened with Jews and Christians in Venice, we can see that Christians made Jews go to live in places called ghettos, and Jews were kept there all night long. Jewish people also were not able to have any possession, for that reason they were obligated to practice the usury. If we want to label this kind of discrimination in a more contemporary way, we can name these acts as Anti-Semitism (famous term in the Nazis’ times).
Following with the act of discrimination in literary works, we can say that another important author was Chaucer. In his well-known work called “Truth”, he tried to tell the humanity how they had to live their lives in order to reach the heaven. From my point of view, he is discriminating because for those people that did not live “properly” or under these rules, they were not be saved or reached the heaven. This could be discrimination focused on ways of living and religious beliefs.
Chaucer also created “The Wife of Bath”, which from my point of view criticize the way that Alison (the main character) lived. Alison was a woman that had had more than one husband. In the past if a woman had more than one man during her life, she was condemned and mistreated. According to this, the kind of discrimination that we can identify here would be related to “gender”, because due to the fact that Alison was a woman she was prejudiced.
After this overview of some literally works, it is extremely necessary making a conclusion of all these events and try to find a solution. As I said at the beginning of the paper, “discrimination is neither something new nor old”, because unfortunately we can still see discriminatory practices in our world and in our schools, and maybe we will see them in the future. If we want to avoid discrimination, I think we have to follow two main steps. First of all, we have to make our students conscious that we have to “accept” that there are differences in the world, in order to assimilate these differences among people and live with them. Once we accepted these thousands or millions of differences, we have to “respect” them. It is very obvious that we will face discriminatory problems at school for many reasons. Our objective has to be that students must know how bad it is to commit these acts, and one way to do it is showing it through Literature.
“I think that discrimination will not disappear, but it has to evolve in order to be controlled and managed”.
After all these antecedents, we can start working of Shakespeare works. This time, we are going to start talking about “The Tempest”. In “The Tempest”, Shakespeare presented two main characters that develop the whole story, Caliban and Prospero. Caliban was the unknown element or character in front of Prospero. Caliban’s appearance was weird and his life style was totally different comparing to Prospero. For example, Caliban did not name thing as Prospero did. This situation could be understood as the non-educated action that Caliban had, what made him inferior in front of Prospero’s eyes. It is obvious that we have discrimination in this relationship between Caliban and Prospero, because as Prospero was more educated than Caliban, he committed discriminatory practices punishing Caliban or showing him that he was inferior. In this situation we can say that there is more than one type of discrimination. If we talk about appearance we can be talking about racial discrimination. We can also say that there is some social discrimination, because as Caliban is not as educated as Prospero, he is condemned to obey and follow Prospero’s rules. If we stop to think about this, maybe we will found that in today’s world the same happen between Latin American populations and the United States, because they think they are more educated than us and they commit so many times discrimination against us.
In addition to the previous analysis, Shakespeare also is the author of “The Merchant of Venice”, in which we can find evident and horrible acts of discrimination. In “The Merchant of Venice”, there are a lot of discriminatory practices. For example, if we stop and analyze what happened with Jews and Christians in Venice, we can see that Christians made Jews go to live in places called ghettos, and Jews were kept there all night long. Jewish people also were not able to have any possession, for that reason they were obligated to practice the usury. If we want to label this kind of discrimination in a more contemporary way, we can name these acts as Anti-Semitism (famous term in the Nazis’ times).
Following with the act of discrimination in literary works, we can say that another important author was Chaucer. In his well-known work called “Truth”, he tried to tell the humanity how they had to live their lives in order to reach the heaven. From my point of view, he is discriminating because for those people that did not live “properly” or under these rules, they were not be saved or reached the heaven. This could be discrimination focused on ways of living and religious beliefs.
Chaucer also created “The Wife of Bath”, which from my point of view criticize the way that Alison (the main character) lived. Alison was a woman that had had more than one husband. In the past if a woman had more than one man during her life, she was condemned and mistreated. According to this, the kind of discrimination that we can identify here would be related to “gender”, because due to the fact that Alison was a woman she was prejudiced.
After this overview of some literally works, it is extremely necessary making a conclusion of all these events and try to find a solution. As I said at the beginning of the paper, “discrimination is neither something new nor old”, because unfortunately we can still see discriminatory practices in our world and in our schools, and maybe we will see them in the future. If we want to avoid discrimination, I think we have to follow two main steps. First of all, we have to make our students conscious that we have to “accept” that there are differences in the world, in order to assimilate these differences among people and live with them. Once we accepted these thousands or millions of differences, we have to “respect” them. It is very obvious that we will face discriminatory problems at school for many reasons. Our objective has to be that students must know how bad it is to commit these acts, and one way to do it is showing it through Literature.
“I think that discrimination will not disappear, but it has to evolve in order to be controlled and managed”.
